


Could

by languageintostillair



Series: After an Almost [6]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cersei Lannister and Jaime Lannister Are Not Related, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, idk it's still not even anywhere close to as angsty as this fic is supposed to get
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24540085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/languageintostillair/pseuds/languageintostillair
Summary: “I’m a mess,” she sighs, though she knows how he’ll respond.You’re not. Don’t talk about yourself that way.Instead, he laughs softly. “So am I.”Maybe that’s true. There’s so much she knows of Jaime’s mess, so much she doesn’t. But she doesn’t want to dwell on their messes tonight. She just wants to hear the voice that she thought she would never hear again. That’s when she realises—it isn’t that she misses his voice after only two days. It’s that she’d told herself not to miss his voice in those two years and two months, and all of that missing she’d wanted to do had lain dormant in her throughout that time. Now it finally has somewhere to go.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: After an Almost [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1662541
Comments: 26
Kudos: 109





	Could

**Author's Note:**

> So, in the midst of struggling with this part, I realised I had to split it in two, meaning there’ll be three more parts after this. It also means you get a bit more of a breather in this part before I really launch into the angst. Like I said, these two have a lot of shit to get through, but I do want to lay a good foundation for them before things come to a head, because otherwise they wouldn’t have anything to fight for, would they? By the way, just a heads up that they don’t shy away from talking about Cersei in this part, and she’ll remain a spectre for the next two parts as well.

Honestly, it’s easier than Brienne thought it would be.

Though, in fairness, there isn’t much _time_ for thinking about how it would be.

That’s what they’d agreed on. Time. Between that Sunday morning and the next Saturday. But Jaime calls her on Sunday before bed, Monday when he wakes, Monday before bed, Tuesday when he wakes, Tuesday before bed—and that isn’t even including the _texting_ —until Brienne decides enough is enough. When her phone buzzes on Wednesday morning, she rejects the call.

 **You can’t call me twice a day if you’re supposed to be giving me time,** she texts him.

😔, he texts back.

She reads over her message again. **I’m sorry. That was too harsh,** she types. She thinks of what he’d said to her on Sunday, about how she’d treated him back when they were just friends—how she’d been gentle with him one moment, and rough the next; how that oscillation had confused him.

 **No. You’re right,** he replies. But she worries that she’s fucked up anyway.

 **No calls till Saturday?** she says, grasping her phone a little tighter as she waits for his response.

 **No calls till Saturday,** he agrees.

So he doesn’t call. Just like she’d asked. Except, for the rest of the day, he texts her so often that she thinks there probably wasn’t much of a point to banning calls in the first place. He texts her so often that she has no time to feel that old, not-so-forgotten impulse to worry about the whats, and whens, and hows of his messages. It’s nice, not to have to feel that, but Brienne knows better than to assume this is a good thing. That impulse—it has always been about her insecurity, not his inaction. It isn’t Jaime’s responsibility to fix it, though it seems as if he’s trying his best to do so, even without her making it known.

And yes, she’s sure that impulse still exists. She’s sure because she has to make the effort _not_ to think about the times from before, when she’d wondered why he was taking longer than usual to respond. She has to make the effort not to fill in those times with Cersei. She has to make the effort not to linger on the fact that she can remember those times at all. It isn’t fair—that was all in the past, a past when Jaime had the right to be with someone else, and she believes him now when he says Cersei is no longer in his life—but the memories come to her anyway. Remind her that she’d let all of it hurt her for so long. She’d been silent, and selfish, thought herself worth no more than Jaime’s friendship, worth no less than the little happiness he could give her. How long had they been friends until she’d decided to open her mouth? More than two years? She didn’t have feelings for him at the start, that much is true, but how much of those more-than-two years had she spent worrying about the whats, and whens, and hows of his messages?

No—Jaime isn’t the one to fix it. It will have to be her. There’s nowhere else to put the blame.

By the time Thursday night comes around, she has to admit to herself that she misses hearing his voice. Gods, she’d gone without it for two years and two months, and now it’s been two _days_ and she’s missing it already. Some part of her wants to push that yearning down deep—it’s what she’d trained herself to do, even while they were still friends, _especially_ while they were still friends—but she’s _allowed_ to miss hearing his voice now, isn’t she?

Perhaps she shouldn’t tell him, though. They’d said they would take it slow, and telling someone you miss hearing their voice after _two days_ isn’t taking it slow, is it?

Before she can stop herself, she’s dialling his number.

“What’s wrong?” Jaime asks, when he picks up.

“Wrong?” she echoes.

“You said no calls till Saturday. But you’re calling. Is something wrong?”

 _Fuck._ She feels some measure of regret for breaking this rule that she’d imposed, though she’s not sure exactly why. Hypocrisy? A show of weakness? “No. Nothing’s wrong, I just—”

She can’t say the words.

“I know,” he replies. _I know. I know you. I feel the same way you do._ It’s the most intimate thing in the world. It’s the most frightening thing.

“I’m a mess,” she sighs, though she knows how he’ll respond. _You’re not. Don’t talk about yourself that way._

Instead, he laughs softly. “So am I.”

Maybe that’s true. There’s so much she knows of Jaime’s mess, so much she doesn’t. But she doesn’t want to dwell on their messes tonight. She just wants to hear the voice that she thought she would never hear again. That’s when she realises—it isn’t that she misses his voice after only two days. It’s that she’d told herself not to miss his voice in those two years and two months, and all of that missing she’d wanted to do had lain dormant in her throughout that time. Now it finally has somewhere to go.

“Are you getting ready for bed?” she asks. An intimate and frightening question.

“Yeah. I’m already _in_ bed, actually.” She can imagine his lips curling, and she braces herself for some suggestive comment. But he only says, “I’m on my laptop, though. Have some work to finish up.”

“Work you couldn’t finish because you were texting me all day?”

“… Maybe. Fuck, is it eleven already? I’m on my last email, thank the Gods.”

“ _Maybe_ you should text me less often, so you can cultivate some healthier sleeping habits. Like not bringing your work to bed.”

“Hmm. There are definitely other… things… I would prefer to bring to bed,” he drawls.

There’s something in his words that lacks intent—something offhanded, automatic, _careless_ —but she stiffens anyway. “ _Jaime_.”

He doesn’t respond; she can hear him typing away on his keyboard. “Done!” he announces after a few seconds, and then there’s the sound of a laptop being closed. “Sorry. What were we talking about?”

“Your unhealthy sleeping habits,” she lies.

“Right. So you want me to text you less too?”

Her mouth can’t seem to form an answer either way.

“Indulge me, Brienne,” Jaime breaks the silence. “Two weeks ago, I thought I’d never see you again. I’ve missed you.”

She wonders if she’ll ever get used to him telling her that. To be missed is to be _wanted_ , and there’s a part of her that never fully believed that Jaime wanted her around, even as just a friend. “Alright,” she whispers.

“Good. Anyway—speaking of unhealthy sleeping habits. You’re telling me you’re not in bed with your phone right now?”

Brienne burrows deeper under the covers. “I didn’t say I was any better.”

“Ha.” There’s a kind of rustling sound, his head nestling into his pillow, probably. She has the strange thought that they’re like two teenagers navigating their very first relationship, not that she would know what that would be like in practice. “So,” Jaime continues, “now that you’ve called. Does this mean I get to call you in the morning?”

“… No.”

“Fine, be that way.” They _are_ teenagers. “Do I at least get to show up at your apartment bright and early on Saturday?”

“Is that what you do now? Wake up early on Saturdays?” He’d always slept in on the weekends if he could, back in the day.

“Not always. But I’d do it for you.”

She squeezes her eyes shut. Someone else might feel flattered by such a statement, but she doesn’t know what to do with attention like that.

“… Can I? Do it for you?” Jaime asks, slowly, when she doesn’t reply.

“Okay,” she whispers again.

He shows up a few minutes before nine on Saturday. Bright and early by Jaime’s standards. She’d promised she’d cook breakfast—she’s not the best cook, but she can do eggs and bacon and toast just fine, which she’s just about done plating—and he told her he’d get the coffee. She doesn’t know why she’s surprised when he shows up with two cups from their usual cafe.

(She supposes she can call it their usual cafe again. There was a break in their routine of two years and two months, but some things are allowed to be the same. It’s nice to think that they could be.)

“Gods, I’ve missed this,” she says, fixing her eyes on the cups in his hands. She ignores the fact that she can say that so naturally about coffee, when it is so difficult for her to say those words to Jaime, or accept them from him.

“No good coffee in Winterfell?” Jaime replies, handing her cup to her. “Your usual.”

Those last two words give her goosebumps, and she’s this close to blushing, and she feels like a fool. “Nothing as good.” She brings the cup to her lips, drinks, sighs.

At least, she thought it was a sigh. Perhaps it sounded like a—

“I take it you enjoyed that,” Jaime smirks, and if she was this close to blushing a few seconds ago, she must be bright red now. What must she have sounded like? Because of _coffee_? Abruptly, she turns away from him, moves to bring their plates to her dining table, prays that Jaime won’t pursue it. He doesn’t, though the next time she meets his eyes, she notices that the smirk hasn’t left it. The goosebumps stay risen on her arms.

As they tuck into their food, and drink the coffee from their usual cafe, Brienne allows herself to think that breakfast with Jaime is pleasant. And maybe it is—it’s certainly easier than she thought it would be—but it’s also a pleasant _diversion_. Jaime had called this a date, which she’d acknowledged, but to her, that doesn’t feel like the main objective of the day. She knows that her mind might just be trying to distract herself from it—a _date_ , her _first_ date, her first date with _Jaime_ —but she can’t let go of the fact that what they really have to do is talk _properly_ , and history has shown her that delaying necessary conversations is hardly the wisest thing to do. It’s easy, though, isn’t it? To pretend everything is fine? It’s easier than she thought it would be. It’s easier than intimate and frightening things.

They sit down on the couch after, and despite the week of phone calls and texts and getting used to each other again, neither of them seems to know what to say. What would they even discuss? What ‘taking it slow’ means? How would that even work—should they come up with a timeline of events? She could get out some pen and paper, or even her laptop, so she can construct a spreadsheet. It’s such an absurd thought, and she’s smiling before she can stop herself.

“What?” Jaime asks.

“Nothing,” she shakes her head. “I just—this seems ridiculous, that’s all. I mean, I don’t know how to talk about these things.”

He raises his hand slightly, lets it hover an inch above hers. He’s waiting. She gently flips her palm up, giving him permission, and she can feel his relief as he interlaces his fingers with hers. “What if we keep it simple?” he says.

“But it isn’t simple.” It can’t be. It can’t be so _easy_.

He angles himself towards her, still gripping her hand in his. “We do what feels right to both of us. We talk about what doesn’t. Simple.”

She wishes it could be. “Jaime—”

He holds up their hands. “Does this feel right?”

In truth? “It feels—” _good_ dies in her throat. It does. It feels good, a kind of good she’s felt so rarely that it feels like just the opposite. _We do what feels right, and we talk about what doesn’t_ , Jaime said. This feels right, and wrong at the same time. But this is her battle, not his—her insecurity, not his inaction—and she’d already had a near breakdown about a _kiss_. She doesn’t want to talk about why holding his hand could feel anything other than good. She wants to be able to hold someone’s hand, _Jaime’s_ hand, and feel good. It’s what she’s supposed to feel, this pure, uncomplicated goodness. She wants to feel what she’s supposed to feel. She wants to believe that she could, even if she doesn’t quite know how to get there.

Jaime grins, oblivious to her thoughts. “I’ll accept that answer,” he says. Then, that grin falls. “We should—there _is_ something we should talk about.”

 _Cersei._ She sucks in a breath. “I know.” She knows. It has to be done. “But just—” She stops. She can’t ask it of him. It’s his choice, how to tell this story. And he’ll know how not to hurt her again, won’t he?

Jaime nudges her thigh with their joined hands. “Just what?”

She bites her lip. “Could you keep it—I don’t know. Just the… the facts.” It’s a stupid request. Facts aren’t any less painful. Pain isn’t any less of a fact.

She thinks Jaime understands, though, because he nods and doesn’t ask further. “I’ll try. But you need to trust me. Trust that she doesn’t have a place in my life. I’m not—I’m not wearing that damn ring anymore. I haven’t worn it this whole week.”

“Alright,” she nods, even as he says _I’ll flush it down the toilet if you need me to_ , and she looks at him in horror, because he’s just too fucking rich for his own good. “Hells, Jaime, sell it and donate the money if you want to get rid of it.”

“If that’s what you want me to do—”

“That’s what I would _prefer_ you would do instead of flushing it down the toilet.” She pauses. “If that feels right to you.”

It does, Jaime promises her, and laughs. But he lets that laugh die, just as she’d let the word _good_ die in her throat, and he tells her, haltingly, about meeting Cersei in high school. Rich, popular, beautiful guy meets rich, popular, beautiful girl—same old story, isn’t it? Except it hadn’t felt like a same-old-story. It felt like something deeper, _meant to be_ , and they were both convinced of it—or she’d convinced him of it, he isn’t really sure anymore. They’d gone on to university together, and it had seemed like it was the beginning of the rest of their lives, and everything was good, _everything felt right_. Until one day, she told him she needed to be with someone with more… more _ambition_. No—she told him that was what her family wanted. But she loved him, she swore she loved him, that she was the one that she truly wanted, and she promised him the others meant nothing. He was stupid enough to go along with it, all the way through university and beyond, until she _married someone else_. That was the last straw, he thought, except it _wasn’t_. He kept seeing her, hoping one day she’d come to her senses and leave—and he’d worked his ass off, too, of course he had, but his idea of ambition never seemed to match hers—and all the while she still said that she loved him, that they were meant to be together, and he could never summon the courage to say, _not like this_. He thought it was romance. Star-crossed lovers and all that.

So he kept leaving, going back, leaving, going back. He didn’t know how else to be. He’d gotten so accustomed to it, and Cersei always seemed to know just how to make him hope. She knew exactly when to call him, exactly what to text him, exactly what to say and do whenever they had the opportunity to meet. Then—a few months before Brienne was due to leave for Winterfell—Cersei got divorced. And suddenly, she was back in Jaime’s arms again, telling him it was their time, they didn’t have to worry anymore about what her family wanted, she was free now, but he understood why she did the things she did, didn’t he? He’d always understood her best. Some part of Jaime already knew it didn’t feel right—there was something about the way she spoke about her ex-husband, about the mistress that the man was well on his way to marrying, who’d given him the child Cersei hadn’t been able to give him, or hadn’t wanted to give him—but there was also something telling Jaime, _this is your chance_. She’ll know now. They were _meant to be_. Or maybe he just wanted to prove that all that time and effort and pain was worth _something_. And then Brienne left, and—

“And you married her,” she completes.

“And I married her.” He’s still gripping her hand, she realises, and she feels the sweat between their palms. “It didn’t change anything between us. Or it made it worse, as bad as it was already. She’d married me out of spite.” He heaves a sigh. “But maybe I already knew that from the moment she first suggested it. I didn’t have anyone to talk me out of it, though.”

“Are you saying… you think I could have?” That isn’t _fair_. She’d hardly known about Cersei at all. What could she have done?

“No. No, I don’t think so,” Jaime scrambles to respond. “I think things needed to happen the way they did. I needed to realise it for myself, you know?”

“But you… you made it sound like you wouldn’t have married her. If I hadn’t left things the way I did.”

“I didn’t mean to—I don’t know. It was my choice, in the end. And it would probably have been worse for both of us, if you’d been here. But I meant what I said, last weekend—I don’t think I could have left her if I hadn’t met you. I think—she might have known it too. That I’d changed. That I couldn’t be hers in the same way.”

Brienne doesn’t quite understand it—the effect she could have had on Jaime. She understands it less than the effect that Cersei had on Jaime, twisted as it was. But he’d told her last Saturday that he’d figured there was a better way to be, because of _her_. She’s a mess, though—she’s always felt like a mess—and she doesn’t understand how she could have changed him. What had she done, besides live her life the best way she knew how, which didn’t feel very well at all? Was that really all she’d needed to do? She hadn’t even offered him her friendship, not really; they’d somehow fallen into it, after a rough start, and she cared for him the only way she knew how to care for another person. She always did have this vague idea that she’d been Jaime’s closest friend, the closest friend he’d had in a long time—or ever—and when she’d reflected upon their friendship in those two years and two months, she’d thought perhaps that was why things had always felt so intimate with him. Intimate and frightening. Perhaps that was simply Jaime’s way, just as it had been hers to guard herself against him until she no longer could. But all of that—how did all of that manage to change him so profoundly?

“Brienne—I’m sorry—” Jaime says, and why is he apologising?

Oh. She feels something wet on her cheek.

“No—I’m sorry—” she wipes away a tear— “It’s nothing. Just—just old wounds, that’s all.” _It’s not about you_ , she tells herself. _Don’t make it about you._ But there’s also a voice telling her, _Cersei’s nothing to be jealous of. Don’t you see?_ She knows she’s supposed to believe that voice. She wants to believe that she could.

Jaime brings a hand to her cheek, tentatively, as if he thinks she might break otherwise. As if she’s something precious, and delicate. _Precious and delicate. Me._ It makes no sense. But he’s drawing himself closer to her, and looking into her eyes, and for all that fuss she’d made last weekend about not being able to look in his, she can’t seem to look away now. He’s asking for permission, in that same tentative way he’d just placed his hand on her cheek, and hovered his hand over hers a while ago, in that way that tells her she might be precious and delicate. To her surprise, she finds herself wanting to believe that she could be.

She finds herself believing it.

She gives him the slightest nod.

Their second kiss tastes of coffee. Coffee from their usual cafe. It’s soft, softer even than the first, though she doesn’t recall much of that. This one is precious, and delicate. She’s never been one for pretty things, but she wants to put their second kiss in a jeweled box, one that she could open from time to time so she could treasure the memory of it. Then she remembers she could always just— _kiss Jaime._ She’s allowed to do that now. She’s allowed to accumulate any number of kisses, to be described by any number of adjectives.

“How was that?” he asks, when they break apart. “For a second kiss?”

“Better,” she replies, honestly. “Though I only have one other kiss to compare it with.”

She hadn’t meant anything by that statement—it’s the pure, uncomplicated truth—but Jaime has that smirk on his face again. She already knows what he’ll say: _I suppose we’ll just have to kiss more, so you’ll have more grounds for comparison._

“Stop that,” she scolds, before he can say something to that effect.

“Stop what?” he replies. The smirk is still there.

“After everything you’ve just told me—”

He sits back, and knits his brow. “I haven’t seen her in more than a year.”

“I hadn’t seen you in more than two, and yet here we are.”

“You think I’ll still go back to her.”

“No—that’s not what I meant.” She trusts him about this, she _does_. She doesn’t know why, but she does. “I just—you were—entangled. For half your life.”

“I was. But I was also… disentangling myself for much longer than the last two years. The marrying part aside.” He exhales, and tilts his head back until it hits the couch. “I guess it doesn’t make much sense. That I needed to… to entangle myself _more_ , so that I could disentangle myself entirely.”

Brienne turns his words over in her mind. She thinks about how it’s the reverse for her—that she might have never found herself back here with Jaime, if she hadn’t made the decision to disentangle herself from him in the first place. She thinks about time; about _needing_ time. She thinks about the milestones and chronologies of relationships—the ones she’d never experienced, but knew the orders of anyway—and how those rules don’t seem to apply to them at all. Jaime had fallen in love with someone, married her after two decades—after he’d already drifted away from her, though not far enough—divorced her after six months. Hadn’t seen her in over a year. Brienne had fallen in love with someone, hid her feelings for much of their friendship, broken up with him without ever having been with him. Found him again after two years and two months.

But there’s still an order to some things. Like a first kiss, and a second. Brienne finds comfort in this indisputable order, and she doesn’t wish those kisses came any earlier than they did, though she’s already twenty-nine and Jaime’s already thirty-seven. Because she is realising now that there is so much that could still come after—after short-lived marriages, and break-ups that weren’t strictly break-ups, and all the things that needed to happen in the way that they did, in the order that they did. Even after all of that, there could still be a second kiss, on a first date.

And a third kiss.

And a fourth.

And a fifth.

Today, they have all the time that they need.

**Author's Note:**

> On the one hand, this is kind of a good note to end on, isn’t it? On the other hand, hope is all well and good, but healing takes work. Just be prepared that what is to come is… painful. Also, now that I’ve filled in Jaime’s back story with Cersei, I’ll probably give more hints in the next part about how he and Brienne met and became friends in the first place. I liked the idea that their past remains this mysterious thing, but it doesn’t seem at all fair now that we know much more about the situation with Cersei.
> 
> Big thanks to [Roccolinde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roccolinde) for reading this through! And I'm on [Tumblr](https://shipping-receiving.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
